U.S. troops

President Obama declared 2014 a pivotal year in pulling nearly all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016. To examine the timetable laid out by the president, Gwen Ifill gets views from former Defense Department official Michèle…

Six years after the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, Iraq declared a public holiday Tuesday to mark the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from cities and towns, staging a military parade aimed at illustrating its security progress.

The drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq is moving forward with the U.S. military announcing the reduction of 12,000 troops over the next six months as the next step toward the goal of ending combat operations by August 2010.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said over the weekend that the United States would send an additional 20,000 to 30,000 forces to Afghanistan by summer as violence in the country continued to rise.

As Iraqi lawmakers spar over approval of a new U.S.-Iraqi security deal, scores of followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took to the streets Friday to protest the pact, chanting slogans and burning an effigy of President George W.

President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have agreed to seek "a general time horizon" for reducing U.S. troops in Iraq as part of a broader security agreement, the White House said Friday.